"I went down like this to take the picture and I heard it hiss," she said, describing how she discovered that the 8-foot-long gator on the driveway was the real thing.

Page called 911. She said the first officer to arrive "got out of his car with a rope like he was going to lasso it."

"I asked him, 'Have you been trained for this?'" she said.

Officer Richard Schictel said it's just something he's learned on the job.

"I made a lasso and got it around his top jaw and was hoping that he would go into a death roll and tie himself up, but he didn't want to cooperate, so we just kind of held tension on him until the trapper got there," Schictel said.

After more than an hour, a trapper was able to tie the gator's legs together and its mouth shut.

Neighbors think the gator came from a nearby canal. The gator will be relocated to an alligator farm.

Schictel summed up his feelings about the ordeal when it was all over with just one word: "Relief."